PD Editorial: Clear the air

<p>When it comes to climate change, Sonoma County gets it.</p><p>Five years ago, the Board of Supervisors and all nine cities promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2015. It wasn't until a year later that the Legislature passed and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 32, a less ambitious law requiring a 25 percent reduction statewide by 2020.</p><p>Regulations to implement AB 32 are likely to include limits on tailpipe emissions and requirements for cleaner fuel. But they won't take effect until 2012, almost two years from now. Yet two Republican lawmakers are blaming the law for California's economic troubles and trying to put an initiative on November's ballot to suspend it. Under the measure by Rep. Tom McClintock of Granite Bay and Assemblyman Dan Logue of Chico, implementation of AB 32 would be suspended until the state's unemployment rate dips below 5.5 percent.</p><p>They call it the California Jobs Initiative, but it's just a self-serving effort by polluters to duck clean-air rules. The signature-gathering effort is being bankrolled in large part by four oil refiners, three of them headquartered in Texas: Tesoro Corp., Tower Energy Group, Valero Energy Corp. and Wold Oil Corp. The only hint of grass-roots support disappeared when Public Advocate, the activist group founded by Paul Gann and headed by Ted Costa, dropped out. Costa even offered to write the ballot argument against this initiative if it qualifies.</p><p>Both of the major Republican candidates for governor, Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, say they want to suspend AB 32. Whitman says she'll do it if she's elected; Poizner has endorsed the initiative. And both are repeating claims that AB 32 drives up energy prices and, therefore, costs jobs.</p><p>But a law that has yet to take effect didn't drive California's umployment rate over 12 percent. It was a recession, fueled by a collapsed real estate bubble and irresponsible risks taken by financial institutions.</p><p>AB 32 may be opposed by oil refiners, but it has strong support from California's high-tech companies, including Hewlett-Packard and eBay, Whitman's old company — and for good reason.</p><p>Investment in clean energy tripled in three years after the law was passed, with $3 out of every $5 going to California companies, according to the state Air Resources Board. In Sonoma County, installation of alternative energy systems is about the only bright spot for the construction industry.</p><p>The long-term effects of this law — or any other — are hard to predict. The Air Resources Board predicts that it will create 120,000 jobs by 2020. The legislative analyst questioned the economic model used by the ARB and predicted gains in some industries, notably green technology, and losses in others.</p><p>California has long been a leader in technology. This is no time to shift its allegiance to big oil.</p>